Social media trends and cultures

Gen Z today is all about how you look in front of everyone or following fleeting 'trends' and being  up to date even if it means buying a "Balenciaga trash bag" worth $1790. Our generation wants it all. We are both -  the trend setters as well as the trend followers. Hence, it won't be wrong to claim that social media cultures and trends are  of a lot more importance in all of our lives than one might imagine.

Dark Academia, what is the first thing that comes to mind upon hearing that word ? When I asked some people about it, the answers were quite confusing. But when they came to know about the real meaning, the most common reaction was that they have come across this culture but they did not know the right name for it.

Teenagers have created their own image about  the things they knew existed once and formed this community called ‘dark academia’ in the digital world. It. This culture emphasises what life would have been like in the 18th and 19th centuries and includes mood boards that have literary works, brown cardigans, classical instruments or skulls lined up next to candles. 

Dark academics consider education to be something that gives them a sense of belonging towards what they are studying . Peter Fleming, in his book titled, ‘Dark Academia- How Universities Die’ talks about how the current academic life has been impacting the students as well as the staff - leading them to anxiety, self-harm or depression and in some cases even lead to suicide. They are pressured to complete their degrees and get a job that helps them settle.

It can be said that people posting about dark academia might just be finding it really classy and cool or are just appreciating the ancient times and their living style & work but it might also mean that they feel lost in their current environment altogether. They might wish they were born in that era because they feel that they belong there and  are using this social media  to express their thoughts and feelings.

Another such aspect of social media is toxic masculinity. People tend to be more toxic online because their real names are hidden behind their usernames and so they easily get away with whatever they do. Toxic masculinity is basically men undermining others sexually and mentally and portraying themselves as dominant. These men approach life and others with the ‘we know what we are doing’ attitude. Negatively commenting on someone’s physical appearance, interests or even their success or threatening them are all the basic means by which men gain the satisfaction of defining themselves as the ‘king’. 

We all understand the consequences of such baseless toxicity and  yet it is us who romanticise toxic behaviour and term it as ‘cute’ or ‘need someone just like this’. There are so many lead characters in novels, movies and series that are actually toxic but we make reels or posts about what an  amazing partner they are and ignore the reality. Be it Kabir Singh or Damon Salvatore, all you see  on social media nowadays is fan pages for the characters. It's not about how such characters are portrayed in  movies and series' but  the way they are portrayed on social media sets unrealistic expectations in relationships and life altogether. Beyond this, individuals  tend to sideline other important facts like domestic violence . Due to this, people do not report but rather  accept domestic violence  because other than that their relationship seems perfect, their partner is perfect in all other aspects. They start justifying the actions of their partners instead of raising their voice against it.

It is important to realise that instead of romanticising these characters and relationships on social media, we should look out more for the reality. Talk about how normal it is to not want to stay in an abusive relationship, how such relationships are unhealthy, even if it has the ‘compensating’ factor in it. For example- Shweta Tiwari used her social media account to talk about the reality of her abusive marriage. 

This is where another picture comes in of how mental disorders are romanticised on social media. It is basically an attempt to portray mental illnesses as ‘beautiful’ or ‘calm’. Social Media platforms like instagram and tumblr have come out with a very different approach to deal with mental illness by quoting them as ‘tragically beautiful’. The fact is that mental illness is not beautiful or calm but it is rather painful. It is about all those difficult experiences that a person goes through psychologically as well as physically every day. People suffering from mental disorders do not need for them to be called beautiful, they need only proper treatment, genuine care, attention, and acceptance. By making mental illness a trend, we have not only shifted our focus from people who actually suffer but  also invalidated their experience which has affected them negatively.

This trend has had an entirely different effect. A lot of teenagers find it cool to be suffering from mental illness and tend to fake it which affects their daily lifestyle. This urge to fit in with every aspect of social media sometimes causes them to ruin their life. They end up being so busy in making their digital life beautiful and worth looking at that they forget about their actual life. Zeenat from Mismatched has rightfully said that, ’’inhe help maangna aata hi nahi hai.” She was talking about us and how we find it difficult to ask for help from others to just look like we have a perfect and happy life. It is necessary to realise that people who actually ask for help are courageous enough to accept it and willingly change themselves. There is a need to normalise asking for help and put your well-being above any other emotion that interrupts it. It is not compulsory to ask for professional help, conversing about your problems with your family or friends is also beneficial.

People who wish to become an influencer sometimes end up losing friends in real life. They tend to get affected a lot because of their follower count which may lead to dangerous results like anxiety or even suicide. They indulge so much into social media that after a point there is this realisation of having no life outside the screen.

Undoubtedly social media is very crucial to all of us and definitely has made our life better with all it has but it is necessary to understand that social media is just a part of our life and not our entire life. 

REFERENCES 

1. Bateman, K. (2020, June 30). What is the TikTok subculture Dark Academia? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/style/dark-academia-tiktok.html

2. How toxic are we really? : To what extent are negative social media comments towards men showing feminine traits related to toxic masculinity and what other factors are influencing their opinion? - University of Twente Student Theses. (n.d.). Retrieved October 25, 2022, from http://essay.utwente.nl/91387/

3. Singh, P. (2019, April 23). Why Are We Romanticising Mental Illness On Social Media? Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/06/27/romanticising-mental-illness-social-media/

About the author

I am Hrishika Jain, studying in first year, BSc Applied PSychology. I like reading and I have been learning contemporary dance  for a while now. I am an introvert but at the same time an open book with the people I have known for a long time. I have been writing poems and small write-ups for the past three years and it has been my comfort zone to pen down whatever it is that I feel.